Four: Wrong number

SUSAN 

Noah was still holding my phone.

His thumb moved across the screen, scrolling, checking something. I watched his jaw work. Watched the muscle tick.

"There's no number," he said. "It says unknown."

"I know."

"People don't call from unknown numbers at seven in the morning, Susan."

"Telemarketers do."

He looked at me.

I looked away.

My hands were shaking. They'd been shaking since the sprinklers, since the smoke, since before that — but now it was worse, and I needed something to do with them. Something that wasn't sitting here under his stare.

I stood up.

The blanket slid off my shoulders and pooled on the floor, and I didn't pick it up. I just walked toward the hallway, toward the bathroom, toward anywhere that wasn't the couch and his eyes and that phone.

"Where are you going?"

"First aid kit."

"You—" He stood. "Susan, wait. The phone—"

"You're bleeding." I didn't turn around. "You've got a cut on your head and you didn't even notice."

He was quiet for a second.

Then his footsteps followed me.

I found the kit under the sink, where we always kept it — behind the extra toilet paper, next to the bleach. My hands were still shaking when I popped the latch. Gauze. Antiseptic. Bandages.

Noah stood in the doorway. Arms crossed. Water still dripping off his hair onto the tile.

"Come here," I said.

He didn't move.

"Noah."

"You're lying to me."

The words landed flat and heavy, like a dropped plate.

I pulled out the antiseptic and unscrewed the cap. My fingers slipped on it. Twice.

"It was a wrong number," I said.

"Wrong numbers don't breathe into the phone."

I finally looked at him.

He was leaning against the doorframe, and there was something in his face I hadn't seen before — not anger, not fear. Something careful. Something measuring. Like he was looking at a stranger and trying to decide how much of her he recognized.

"Wrong numbers," he said again, slower, "don't breathe into the phone."

"It was a scam call. They do that. They wait for you to say something so they know the line is live."

"Then why did you go pale?"

"I got blown up twenty minutes ago. I'm allowed to be pale."

He stared at me.

I stared back.

Somewhere in the apartment, water was still dripping. The smell of smoke hadn't faded — it had settled in, made itself at home in the walls.

"Come here," I said again, and this time I made it soft.

He came.

I sat him down on the edge of the tub and stood between his knees. Poured antiseptic onto the gauze. His eyes never left my face.

I dabbed at the cut above his eyebrow.

He didn't flinch.

"Am I supposed to pretend that didn't happen?" he asked quietly.

"It didn't happen."

"Susan—"

"You got hurt. I need to clean it before it gets infected."

He caught my wrist.

Just like that. One hand, gentle but immovable, wrapping all the way around it.

"Look at me."

I looked.

"I don't care what it was," he said. "A scam. A wrong number. Whatever you want to call it. If someone calls you and it scares you like that — I want to know."

"It didn't scare me."

His thumb moved against the inside of my wrist. Right over my pulse.

I knew what he felt there.

He knew I knew.

We stayed like that for a long time. Him holding my wrist, me standing between his knees with a bloody piece of gauze in my other hand, both of us waiting for the other one to break first.

He broke first.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay."

He let go of my wrist.

I went back to cleaning the cut. He let me. His eyes stayed open, and his hands stayed in his lap, and neither of us said anything for a while.

But he didn't believe me.

And I knew it.

---

SUSAN 

They arrived at nine.

Three of them. Matching blue uniforms, matching toolboxes, matching expressions of a job they didn't want to be doing. The oldest one — bald, thick arms, a name patch that said HENRI — took one look at the kitchen and whistled low.

"Ma'am," he said, "you're lucky to be alive."

"So I've heard."

Noah handled the talking. I stood in the doorway with my arms crossed and let him do it, because he was better at this than me — the flat voice, the controlled anger, the way he made men twice his age shift on their feet just by looking at them.

They got to work. Boards off. Panels open. Meters out. The apartment filled up with the sound of metal on metal and men grunting and someone's radio playing a station I didn't recognize.

I drifted.

By eleven I was in the dining room with a glass of cold juice, bare feet tucked up on the chair, watching the light move across the floor.

I didn't realize Noah had come up behind me until his hands closed around my waist.

I jumped — half a flinch, half a laugh — and he pulled me back against his chest.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all.

"You're not."

"No."

His hands slid down. Cupped. Squeezed.

I smacked his arm without turning around. "There are three men in our kitchen."

"Then be quiet."

"You be quiet."

He laughed against my ear. Low. Warm.

I leaned back into him anyway. Let my head fall against his shoulder. He smelled like soap again — he'd showered, finally, washed the smoke out of his hair — and I closed my eyes and pretended, for one second, that this was just a normal morning.

Him behind me. My juice going warm on the table. Nothing on fire.

"Are you okay?" he asked quietly.

"Mm."

"Susan."

"I'm okay."

His arms tightened. Just a little. Just enough.

"You haven't slept," he said.

"Neither have you."

"I'll sleep when they leave."

"You'll sleep when you leave. You've got that meeting at two."

He groaned into my hair. "Don't remind me."

"I'm reminding you."

"I hate you."

"You married me."

"Worst decision of my—"

"Mr. Reed?"

We both turned.

Henri stood in the doorway of the kitchen. Wiping his hands on a rag. His face had changed — the bored, tired look from this morning was gone. He looked at me, then at Noah. Then back at me.

"Can you both come here a minute?"

Noah's hands dropped from my waist.

We followed him.

The kitchen was gutted. Panels open, wires hanging, the whole under-counter area pulled apart like someone had opened a ribcage. The other two men stood off to the side, arms crossed, saying nothing.

Henri walked to the cooker. Pointed.

"See this?"

A small red device. Round. Wired in behind the gas line, tucked up under the burner housing where nobody would ever look.

It looked like a timer.

"Standard setup," Henri said, "this unit's got a manual shutoff, an automatic cutout, and a fuse. That's it. That's all it's supposed to have."

He looked at us.

"That thing wasn't there when we installed it."

I couldn't breathe.

"When was this put in?" Noah asked. Quiet. Very, very quiet.

Henri shook his head slowly.

"Sir," he said, "I don't know. But somebody did.”